


At Last

by idk_books



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Awkward Flirting, F/F, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Nurses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:09:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23396788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idk_books/pseuds/idk_books
Summary: Delia Busby is new to London and nervous about her new life as a nurse. Her fellow nurses - especially Patsy Mount - are keen to help her settle in.
Relationships: Delia Busby/Patsy Mount
Comments: 3
Kudos: 49





	At Last

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I'd have a go at imagining how Patsy and Delia came to be. Not my greatest or most imaginative work but writing it was a nice way of spending self-isolation!

The train clattered unceremoniously into Paddington Station and with it came Delia Busby. Soon to be Nurse Delia Busby, she hoped. After some difficulty involving black cabs and London buses, she found the Nursing Home - her new home - and was shown to her room, and left there, by the surprisingly unwelcome matron. She quickly busied herself with unpacking to stave off any pangs of homesick that were beginning to show their faces. This enforced busy-ness was interrupted by a forthright blonde-haired nurse who breezed in and out with such efficiency that Delia hardly had the time to take a breath. She assumed this nurse had introduced herself and imparted some wisdom about her new life but Delia struggled to recall any of this, such was the swiftness of the nurse’s arrival and departure. But - as she carefully found homes for all the things in her suitcase - she found her mind kept wandering back to the nurse who’d been in her room just long enough to make quite an impression. 

The following morning, she found her way to the dining room for breakfast at the unearthly hour of 6 o’clock. Part of her hoped that the blonde haired nurse would knock for her and show her the way to breakfast but instead she was left to her own devices. She ended up stumbling into the room as Grace was being said. As she found the one vacant seat and fell into it, she was confronted with a large vat of porridge and countless pots of tea. Regardless of the blonde-haired nurse, the plentiful breakfast immediately reassured her that moving to London had been the right decision. 

The next few days passed in a blur of hospital tours, admin and endless cups of tea. Delia was introduced to so many new people that they all started to look the same; she abandoned all hope of ever remembering their names. Each night she’d flop into bed, exhausted, straight after their evening meal. After a particularly gruelling day, she was in her pyjamas and virtually asleep when there was a knock on the door. In the moment, she simply called, “Come in,” to avoid getting out of bed. She wasn’t prepared for the sudden onslaught of pyjama-clad nurses led by the blonde-haired nurse who’d already paid her a visit.

“Sorry! Were you asleep?” she winced sheepishly as she took in Delia curled up in her bed.

“No, no,” Delia said quickly, sitting up and swinging her legs out of bed. She slipped into the dressing gown that was tossed to her and found a glass of something shoved into her hand.

“I thought it was about time we got to know the latest recruit,” the blonde nurse was clearly the spokesperson for the gaggle that now populated Delia’s room. “We know you’re Delia but I expect you’ve met so many people this week that you haven’t the foggiest who we all are.” 

Delia laughed awkwardly in response but was relieved that the confusion of her week was understood. A round of introductions followed where she discovered that the blonde-haired nurse’s name was Patsy. The conversation flowed with ease as she was let in on some of the secrets of the nurse’s home and various ways of surviving the training. Throughout the mindless chatter, Delia found her gaze kept being captured by Patsy. Even when someone else was talking, Delia found herself watching her; scrutinising every facial expression and feeling a quiet thrill every time Patsy laughed. 

Several glasses of babysham later, the conversation shifted with dull inevitability to boys. Particular attention was paid to the junior doctors at the hospital. Delia found her attention drifted: this was an area she had no expertise in nor was it something she wanted to develop an interest in. When she was at school and she found her friends making the sudden transition from boys being the worst to the best thing, she found she had to feign interest - mostly unconvincingly - in their conversations. She’d hoped that the interest would come in time but it hadn’t so instead she’d thrown herself into school, the hockey team and the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. It was that that had led her here, to nursing with her room filled with virtual strangers.

Her nostalgic wander down Memory Lane was interrupted by Patsy telling the ‘hilarious’ story of having to smuggle her boyfriend out of her room through the window. Delia found herself suddenly struggling to join in with their laughter; her stomach turned unpleasantly at the thought of Patsy having boyfriend, of Patsy having a boy in her bedroom and everything that that meant. She couldn’t quite quantify why she was hoping such a physical response to such an unremarkable story. It was one she’d heard time and time again, just with a different narrator. 

“What about you, Deels?” she started at the sound of that voice and the flutterings she experienced at the overly familiar abbreviation.

“Hm?”

“Any illicit boyfriends?” Patsy raised a conspiratorial eyebrow in her direction. 

“Oh,” Delia cursed inwardly that she hadn’t practised this particular lie more at school and ended up resorting to the truth, “nope. No boyfriends. Illicit or otherwise.”

“Oohh,” another of the nurses jumped in, “I see a perfect opportunity to find you one.”

Delia felt herself flush and stared at the blanket she was sat on, picking at a loose thread. She was acutely aware of Patsy’s gaze which seemed fixed upon her, analysing her every reaction, “oh, er, that’s not necessary,” she mumbled.

“Come on! Don’t be a bore!” another nurse joined in enthusiastically.

Delia continued to stare at the blanket, too terrified to speak but desperate to deflect the attention away from her.

“Right, girls!” Patsy broke the uncomfortable silence that had settled over them, “I think we’ve tortured poor Delia enough. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time for relationships but lets’s give her a chance to settle in first.”

Delia smiled gratefully in Patsy’s direction as the other girls reluctantly gathered up the bottles and glasses.

“Let’s do this again some time,” Patsy said, ushering the others out of the room and - Delia couldn’t quite believe it - winking before closing the door behind her.

*** 

The next couple of weeks were punctuated by more visits from her new neighbours. Sometimes with Patsy and sometimes without. The nights Patsy wasn’t there, Delia struggled to suppress the rising sense of panic as she imagined her entangled in the arms of some faceless boyfriend. She was intensely grateful to then see Patsy at breakfast the following morning. Whether Patsy was there or not, the conversations invariably landed on boys and Delia had learned quickly to talk in vague terms about a junior doctor on her ward in an attempt at misdirection. She was to discover that whenever she spoke of this enigmatic doctor, Patsy’s gaze intensified making it all the harder to lie. 

On the nights where the others didn’t knock, she found herself lying awake trying to piece together why it was she couldn’t shift this fabricated interest in the doctor into a real one and why - whenever she thought of him - her thoughts would drift with comforting inevitability to Patsy. It wasn’t the first time Delia had found herself slightly fixated on another girl, or woman. In sixth form, she’d ha a History teacher - Miss Davies - who she’d almost allowed to convince her to enrol on a History course at university. Then she’d spend evenings lying in bed imagining the pride on Miss Davies’ face when she’d tell her she’d be following in her footsteps. It was only when Miss Davies announced that she’d be leaving at the end of term to get married that Delia snapped out of it and remembered her more genuine interest in the work of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. She’d desperately hoped her fixation was a one-off. Nobody else at school seemed to be choosing their future based on one teacher even if that teacher had perfect honey coloured hair and dimples when she smiled. But the memory of Miss Davies was suddenly nothing compared to the very real present with Patsy in it. 

Patsy started to pay her a solo unexpected visits bringing with her a book or a magazine or a record and her Dansette. It was never entirely clear why Patsy would come alone; none of the others ever came without their companions. Their conversation never drifted onto boys and who was smuggling who out of the service entrance. Instead, they spoke of films and books and the vacuous nature of the other nurses. It didn’t take long for Delia to begin to open up about how overwhelmed she’d been feeling. How the move from Wales to London had been quite a shock and she’d found herself too nervous to go anywhere other than the hospital and the Nurses’ Home. Instead of ridiculing her as Delia had expected, Patsy was sympathetic and understanding and listened patiently as she explained her traumatic encounter with a black cab on her first day in London which had very much put her off any further adventures. With some persuasion, Patsy convinced her to dip her two in London’s waters - figuratively of course. That’s how they came to be sat in a cafe two buses away from the nurses’ home as Patsy patiently helped her to find her bearings. 

“So. This is London.” 

“Hardly,” Patsy laughed, “I’m easing you into it. Next time we’ve got a day off together, I’ll take you on the full tour.”

“Will you?”

“Oh yes!” Patsy pushed another cup of tea towards her, “You’ve not seen anything yet.”

“Do you do this for all the new nurses?” Delia said coyly.

“Only the provincial and incompetent ones.” and they fell about laughing. 

***

Soon Patsy was in her room every night often without the pretense of a book or record to lend. Delia was disappointed on the nights where Patsy brought company especially as it meant listening to tales of everyone’s attractions and boyfriends. But even with everyone else there, she and Patsy kept sharing knowing glances as if they were both concealing some great secret but Delia was yet to discover what it was.

One night after Patsy had told yet another ‘hysterical’ story about her boyfriend, everyone shuffled back to their room but Patsy stayed, defiantly still sat on the end of Delia’s bed.

“Are you not going to bed, Nurse Mount?” Delia gathered up the glasses and arranged them neatly on her dressing table.

“Not just yet. Leave that, Deels,” Patsy caught her wrist and pulled her towards the bed, “you’ll be able to have a proper tidy tomorrow.” Delia sat on the bed next to Patsy, somewhat perplexed at what was happening but strangely excited regardless. When Patsy spoke again, Delia realised she hadn’t let go of her arm.“You know I don’t really have a boyfriend, don’t yet?”

“Delia felt her heart quicken and her breath catch in her throat, “you don’t?” she whispered. 

“No, it’s just something I say to keep the girls off my back,” she was leaning in as she spoke, interlacing her fingers with Delia’s, “boys really aren’t for me.”

“They’re not?” Delia felt her cheeks redden as the gap between them shrank.

“No. And I think you know exactly who is for me.” Patsy moved their hands into her lap.

Patsy was now so close that Delia could feel her breath on her lips. Emboldened by this sensation, she hesitantly - clumsily even - closed the gap between them and their lips met. There was a moment where neither of them seemed to know what to do with this unexpected but inevitable contact until Patsy took charge. She raised her hand to Delia’s cheek and drew her face in and they kissed properly. At last.


End file.
